Help me build dark/dark.

I'm overwhelmed by my choices. For RP reasons, it's pretty important that I have hover/fly. (That, and I'm loving hover for a way to stay out of melee while being in a good spot to contribute). But there's too many powers, and options.

Thus far, despite everyone telling me that health/stamina is the best thing ever, I haven't actually run out of stamina much when grouped -- but swift/health/stamina has actually been pretty nice, especially because swift can be slotted to boost both fly and hover.

Basically, though, I'm just plain stumped. I don't seem to have enough slots to get all the must-have abilities unless I omit things like "attack powers of any sort".

FWIW, only level 26, so the details of the build past that are less crucial to me.

I am currently leaning towards roughly:

Level 1: Twighlight Grasp, Dark Blast
Level 2: Tar Patch
Level 4: Moonbeam
Level 6: Hover
Level 8: Howling Twilight
Level 10: Shadow Fall
Level 12: Fearsome Stare
Level 14: Fly
Level 16: Tenebrous Tentacles
Level 18: Swift
Level 20: Night Fall
Level 22: Health
Level 24: Stamina
Level 26: (one of Gloom, Darkest Night, or Dark Pit?)

But I really don't know what I'm doing. Halp!

I would get darkest night very early one and forgo tar patch for later. Tar patch at low levels will not be up every fight.

also I would skip moonbeam (if that is the sniper attack) and take dark blast.

Dark Blast is the non-optional one that I took at 1 because you have to. I could swap Moonbeam for Gloom (the short DoT), I suppose -- but I've found it awfully useful. I do want to have a second attack power relatively early.

You may well be right that I could move tar patch later, although at this point I can obviously slot it for enough recharge to have it available most of the time, and it is pretty awesome. DN has been sort of a poor fit for the mostly-minions fighting I see at lower levels -- I don't see many things live long enough for it to be a good choice. But maybe I should rethink that...

Yeah I was a little tired when I posted about moving the mandatory tier 1. If the stuff is dying so quickly, unless you are at +4/+8 you could also consider tweaking the difficulty for more expeas as well.

If you like hover early I would keep it, it does help with being out of melee and it doesn't affect twilight grasp much that way either. I try to get by with the safeguard temp travel powers until the twenties to get a real travel power.

I made a dark/ice recently. The strategy I followed with that for the dark powers, because there really are so many you do want at once, is take the clicks before stamina and the toggles after. That's my own personal preference. Once you get alternating howling twilight and fearsome stare, the first strikes from the bad guys are hugely reduced in damage and effectiveness.

When I'm in groups, stuff dies quite quickly. When I'm solo, I still have a pretty rough time of things, even at -1/x0. It's gonna be a long time before I can do things above my level consistently.

Darkest night is for bosses, eb's etc. and is a must have.
You can skip one of the tier 1's, dark pit, life drain, torrent and black hole.
Get recall friend, stamina and leadership.

Level 4: Moonbeam

I would switch it out for Gloom, not a huge fan of snipes unless you're a blaster.

Level 6: Hover

Haste, see below.

Level 14: Fly

Super Speed - While I like Fly, have it on many toons... with the easy of getting jet packs now and the benefit of SS and Shadow Fall (being able to stealth missions without any special procs), I would default to SS.

Level 24: Stamina

You may want to move this back to Level 20. I find I have huge problems with endurance when playing solo... D3 has too many kewl powers!

Level 26: (one of Gloom, Darkest Night, or Dark Pit?)

Being a huge fan of Darkest Night, I would vote for that one. But if you're always on good teams that are rolling death mills... I would instead pick something else.

Given that you're at 26, you are high enough to focus on what makes my D/D feel most effective. Shadow Fall plus either a +stealth IO or super speed. This gives you full invisibility. Make sure you have Darkest night, and slot it with at least 1 or 2 tohit debuffs. Then, run past a couple of spawns of enemies, put Darkest Night on a Lt. or Boss, then run back through the spawns you passed up. Doing this will gather 2-4 spawns together and bring them to you. Before they get there, drop Tar Patch to slow them and cluster them even more. Then, pop out of hiding and just hit the full spawn with Tenebrous Hentaicles and Nightfall over and over until they are dead.

The combination of a slotted Darkest Night plus the -tohit effect from your 2 cone attacks will put you in the spot of almost never getting hit. When you do get hit, Twilight Grasp should be more than enough to keep you alive. You don't even need to use your single-target attacks until you've beaten most of the enemies. Honestly, from about level 25 on I rarely used anything but Tentacles and Nightfall until I got down to 2 or 3 enemies. And darkest night is such an effective debuff that you can usually get multiple spawns gathered as long as they all get stuck in the debuff range, something you can ensure happens via tar patch.

Once I got those two attacks well slotted, I ran solo at -1/x4 until I got into my late 30s and had a number of good IO set bonuses, then I ran -1/x6 or +0/x4. It's not super fast, but it's pretty safe, and gathering multiple spawns does help with the speed.

Good luck - you have one of the best available sets in the game. Now you just have to figure out how you can get it to work well for you.

Fly's not optional for RP reasons -- character must have fly. And I actually really like hover for defending, because I can position myself pretty well.

There is no way I can afford a Stealth IO at this point -- they're an order of magnitude more expensive than I have money.

I've been having a really hard time reliably hitting multiple mobs with nightfall. I usually get two, but rarely more than two. I'm not sure why -- I may just suck at positioning. I'd kill for an actual visual representation of the cone.

It really feels like there's just a few too many powers that are must-haves or close to it. I had been planning to postpone stuff like teleporting and leadership until after I had a few more of my core powers in place, though this may be a bad plan. Stamina has been relatively avoidable for grouping, although I agree that it becomes more of an issue when soloing. (This whole project may become somewhat academic for a while, too, as it turns out that I'm nowhere near being able to afford a respec.)

Personally, I'd put out something like this as a standard Dark build:

1: Twilight Grasp
1: <1st attack>
2: <2nd attack>
4: Darkest Night
6: Tar Patch
8: <travel prequisite>
10: <stamina prequisite> or <1st AoE attack>
12: Fearsome Stare
14: <travel power>
16: <stamina prequisite> or <1st AoE attack>
18: Health
20: Stamina
22: Shadow Fall
24: <3rd attack> or <2nd AoE attack>
26: Howlight Twilight
28-30: <free>
32: Dark Servant
35-49: <free>
That gives you the main abilites from Dark miasma along with a good core of attacks. Black Hole should be avoided, and Pet. gaze is decent but by no means neccesary, so pick it if you want, and then add in whatever seconday and pool/epic powers you like into the free slots.

For /Dark, that'd be Dark Blast at 1, Gloom at 2, TT at 16 and NF at 24. And frankly, that's /Dark done - the remaining powers aren't that great (Dark Pit and Life Drain are wasted on with Dark primary, while IMO Snipes and Defender nukes are a waste of a power).

Regarding Nightfall, always aim at the back of the spwan, preferably from as far away as possible (start the power out of range, then run forward till it fires). Also, it's nice to put a +range enhancement into TT, that way both cones have a similar range.

28 D/D here.

Quote:

Originally Posted by _Klaw_ Darkest night is for bosses, eb's etc. and is a must have. You can skip one of the tier 1's, dark pit, life drain, torrent and black hole. Get recall friend, stamina and leadership.

Agree with all of this. I took DN around 24ish and didn't miss it earlier. Get stamina first, then leadership, then RF just because it is handy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by seebs Fly's not optional for RP reasons -- character must have fly. And I actually really like hover for defending, because I can position myself pretty well. There is no way I can afford a Stealth IO at this point -- they're an order of magnitude more expensive than I have money. I've been having a really hard time reliably hitting multiple mobs with nightfall. I usually get two, but rarely more than two. I'm not sure why -- I may just suck at positioning. I'd kill for an actual visual representation of the cone. It really feels like there's just a few too many powers that are must-haves or close to it. I had been planning to postpone stuff like teleporting and leadership until after I had a few more of my core powers in place, though this may be a bad plan. Stamina has been relatively avoidable for grouping, although I agree that it becomes more of an issue when soloing. (This whole project may become somewhat academic for a while, too, as it turns out that I'm nowhere near being able to afford a respec.)

Afford a respec? Can't you just earn one via the respec trial?

As for missing mobs with Nightfall, drop your Tar Patch first (the mob should already be surrounding your tank/scraps). Then unleash with NF/TT.

-MT

Actually yeah you don't need to get maneuvres. The more acc and dmg the better plus vengeance is incredibly useful for avoiding team wipes.

Huh. Well, that'd be three more slots tied up somewhere, and I don't know how I'd shuffle that in. But it does sound tempting, and fits with my general conception of Defender as built for party support.

In an ideal world, I'd want teleport too (mostly for RP reasons).